Electronic commerce is touted as being the basis on which the majority of all transactions will be conducted in the future. For it to be accepted and utilised requires a change in traditional concepts associated with value, how it relates to assets or services, and in particular how that value is traded.
Traditionally the value of a telephone, calculator, software package or music album was quantifiable in terms of units of currency. Yet, in today's economy mobile phones are given away with the service, calculators are given away with magazine subscriptions, Internet browsers are free, and music can be copied and distributed freely by average citizens. Each still holds value for the bearer, but in a form that is getting more difficult to quantify in the form of currency units. As basic assets and services become commoditised (especially digital assets or services) and economic value shifts towards personalised packages of assets and services, the value of a given offering will differ by content, individual, time, and circumstance. Electronic money, barter tokens, e-wallets, online auctions, and online trading initiatives are currency-centric and do not address this issue.
Currency (in all its forms: money, credit cards, debit cards, pre-paid tokens, etc) is not likely to disappear as a convenient form of exchange. Its greatest strength, however, is also its greatest weakness. It can be exchanged for anything and it can be “laundered” or swapped for alternate currency units. For this reason, there will continue to be attempts to steal it. Security will continue to be improved and it will just as quickly be cracked. Unless each atomic currency unit is continuously tracked it can be quickly “laundered” and rendered untraceable and unrecoverable in an International network. One approach to circumventing this issue would be to provide an alternative that is less atomic and more traceable. Barter solutions have been proposed, but have not offered a sufficiently compelling alternative to currency-based systems to convince people to switch. Facilitating an exact match in an exchange of goods and services is complex and the issue is typically resolved by introducing barter units which are typically not tracked at an atomic level, so no currency issues are resolved. Most transaction-centric systems are prone to this effect.
The Internet has also given rise to a new paradigm for the manner in which assets or services can be distributed. Yet, despite the possibilities provided by the communications infrastructure of the Internet, information and content delivery is still primarily message based and addresses to locations, such as HTTP and e-mail addresses, are provided to identify where requests for the information can be made. This limitation also exists in other communications networks, such as mobile telecommunications networks, where again requests need to be made to an interactive voice response system or a messaging server, such as an SMS server, to obtain information. This limited approach is also adopted when seeking to direct potential customers or clients to a product or service. Messages are sent with address locations, or the address locations are advertised in traditional media, such as on television or on billboards. These approaches all require a person to use the address in the normal manner to access content or information. No additional value is provided with the address.
New business initiatives continue to replicate comfortable strategies. Targeted email (targeted mail), banner ads (physical ads), Multimedia Contact Centres (Call Centres), eCommerce Web sites (physical storefront), account aggregation sites (brokers), and portals (shopping malls) deliver an online commercial experience remarkably similar to a traditional commercial experience in the physical world. Innovations continue to promote a currency and transaction-centric, rather than results-centric, view of economic activity and value.
New technical initiatives have emerged based on the science of object-oriented (OO) design to propose systems that leverage the advantages of mirroring the real world. They are novel and provide some new benefits, however, they are still typically used to support the same comfortable strategies as those provided using other system architectures. Object-oriented proposals involve objects that have a life span, are self-describing and contain a representative image as these are usually fundamental aspects of object-oriented design in a visual world. There are systems that focus on encapsulating a transaction and others that focus on encapsulating real world objects such as ownership or digital asset management systems. The transaction-based systems typically involve disposable objects and do not support the business trend towards persistent relationships and the increased value of the ongoing support for the asset or service involved in the transaction. Transactions are a means to an end whereas the value is in the result. Ownership and digital asset management systems typically exclude transaction support, or are non-interactive, or do not support the object inter-relationships required by modem business relationships. To meet the needs of modem business relationships, a system is required that can: create, deliver and support a mechanism to represent a package of contextually related assets and services; reflect the influence of the involved parties; be secure and interactive; and combine the benefits of persistent elements and elements with a limited life span. The system should be simple to manage and scalable.
It is desired to address the above, or at least provide a useful alternative.